Have you ever noticed the best runners cross the finish line with a flourish?

They save a burst for the end. They cross the line as winners.

As we approach the finish line of 2016, do you find yourself looking at the goals you wanted to achieve while thinking or saying,

“What’s the use, it’s all over now anyway. I’ll start fresh in the New Year. What’s the point? I might as well let it slide. ”

While it might be true you didn’t hit the targets you wished, the image, taste and feel of what you’ve done or not done comes with you.

You can’t really start fresh until you make peace with the past.

Derek Rydall, a prominent life coach and spiritual leader, whose book Emergence, Seven Steps for a Radical Life Change (and podcasts) are well worth putting on your reading/listening list for 2017, says,

“Every unfinished pattern of the past robs us of the present energy needed to create a compelling future. Holding onto these past events is like investing in real estate we don’t own anymore. What’s worse, if you don’t complete the past, you can’t have a future, you can only have more past. So how do you stop borrowing from your future to feed the debts of your past? You have to acknowledge it’s done, uncover its gifts, and release the rest.”

So how do you harvest the best and use that as the starter for the New Year?

Step 1 Take inventory. Acknowledge what is true-objectively. Not better. Not worse.  Just what is.

Recognize whatever’s happened is past tense. It’s not happening now. 

Step 2: Harvest the blessings and discover every last bit of good that experience held. Surprisingly if you decide to find the fruits, you will, with even the most difficult situations, from the death of a loved one to a financial failure. This stage is where the most important work is done, because whatever feeling you hold about the experience will be the starter feeling you bring to the next stage of your evolution.

If we focus on loss, we bring loss into our present.

If we focus on the value and gifts of an experience we bring that into our present. 

I worked with a client who’d spent five years on a project. She’d invested thousands of dollars and thousands of hours to create a new business. She couldn’t make the business thrive. She recognized she needed a new plan, but couldn’t get past the grief of her failure.  But as she did the powerful work of HARVESTING THE FRUITS, she began to see how much she’d learned and grown, how resourceful she’d become, how many meaningful relationships she developed as a result of her pursuit. She realized she’d developed spiritual stamina and muscle and wisdom that will fuel her next endeavor. In fact, at a certain point she laughed recognizing truly great people fail more often.  She set a new goal to fail bigger as a means of knowing success requires more failure.

Step 3 Create a new plan to cross the finish line.  Ask yourself if you really harvested all the wisdom and gifts of your past pain or loss what could be possible? What could your vision be? Who could you be and how would you act? What actions could you take today if your vision was fresh and untainted with the feeling of not hitting your goals? If your goal was about your health and well being, what could you do today that would give yourself proof you were committed to your physical health?  Could you do one small thing?  Take the stairs or walk. Eat one smaller meal and skip the cookies in the break room? Sit down and eat consciously?  If being in a relationship is important and you’re alone, what one small act of self-love could you commit? Could you write yourself a love letter and look in the mirror and complement yourself? If your work is disappointing what could you appreciate about it that if you continued to appreciate would appreciate?

Are you willing to see yourself as a winner who crosses the finish line of 2016 pumped and ready to bring on an even better, more informed, more defined, more fulfilling 2017?

Close your eyes….. and…..

Make Believe~Make Belief affirmation: I bring renewed vigor to the end knowing it’s what fuels my beginning.